GABRIEL FERRATER
La Conca
Buoyed by my seashore, a stripped-down crew on this rocky whale, endearing every day. I will play along to belong, yes, I will. And with the same baskets and matching sandals, we’ll call ourselves a community without shame. We’ll sail, carried away by the wind and the current, to become, little by little, brazen, liminal, isolated, barbaric.
“I’m the hunter.” BJÖRK
ARTEMIS
Nocturnal as the logs stacked in the cellar, the hunter is still. Cat’s eyes, breathing to the beat of her prey, synchrony of a precise motion, the chance has come. The present so multiplied, set to flames in this fraction. Right here. All alone. Now.
“And, scattering the aligned letters, my soul saddens remembering the snow drifts sullied by tourists’ dirty footprints.” VÍCTOR RAHOLA
Notes
My first friendships are the truest. Workers, summer vacationers, townsfolk. With the second generation comes Risk, tarot cards, Anaïs Nin, Eva, lipstick on cigarettes, an exploding empty glass.
“Cadaqués was where I had a coffee or glass of wine almost every day with my neighbor Marcel Duchamp, his wife Tiny, and even one day, with his guest Max Ernst, as if it were the most natural thing.” ROSA REGÀS
Elysian
The other world is here, it still is: the fluid medium of phantoms slicing wind gusts like shovels through smoke. The visible ones and the bodiless legacy, glistening skins swimming gently, unceasing. Social life and the other life.
“With Empordà so close, bread is guaranteed.” JOSEP PLA
Maritime Arrangement
The fabrics arrive by boat from India, bought on credit. I’ll sell them at an outrageous price. “It’s Empordà.” I don’t have a room of my own here, but I work in a shop with a view.
“The wind, the wind seduces my happy vessel.” CARLES RIBA
Scuba Diving
It was a difficult choice. So many waves and so many books muddle one’s sense of transcendence, this tiny rowboat of a well-turned phrase.